Wherein he has the distinct feeling that he’s being watched. This room is more for flavor than for challenge; if you take your time and don’t bite off more than you can chew, it poses very little threat. As for the flavor:

Quote:

MYSTERIOUS VOICE: Beethro Budkin…

TREEHEAD: Kind busy, here!

VOICE: I won’t interfere. Much. Can you see me, Budkin? Because I can see you!

TREEHEAD: Whoa! How’d you get down there?

VOICE: Oh, just spilt and left behind like putrid milk. You could come down and visit. A fashioned hole in which you’d fit snug.

TREEHEAD: I…plan to stay up here.

VOICE: HaHaHaHa!

Quote:

VOICE: You plan to do a lot of things. But what will actually happen…who knows?

TREEHEAD: Nobody, but I got my own notions.

VOICE: I…FEEL that you should come down here. And I…FEEL…deeply…that you will. When the Mothingness rushes up for you, you’ll shake with forgotten fears of a child. Stand close to the edge and you may witness it gathering…

TREEHEAD: What do you want already? Jeebus, what?

VOICE: You want things, man above – not me. I am content to wait for certainties to fall into position.

Well, that’s a real upper of a conversation. At least all the eyes make thematic sense now.

Treehead has some parting words for the pit-lurker, who doesn’t see fit to respond. Enough of this frippery, let’s get back to the puzzles!

On to 1S, which it seems must be solved from the other entrance. But there is an inviting passageway straight ahead!

Here’s a room that is incredibly trivial…until you notice the roach on the force arrow at the far-right side of the room. That roach means Treehead has to drink the invisibility potion immediately if he wants to be able to kill it…which means that Treehead has to come out and get the enemies instead of just waiting inside the starting corridor.

As long as Treehead is careful around that rightmost roach, everything is fine. This is an odd placement in the level for what amounts to one of the simpler invisibility tutorials on offer.

And, once he’s done, the blue door remains to block further progress. So it’s back to try the previous room from the correct entrance.

This one is more of a thinker. Treehead is faced with three invisibility potions, then a one-way passage into the heart of the room. How does he need to tackle this one?

The roach in the bottom left has to be killed last, or else Treehead can’t escape after killing it. This means that the green door over on the right side of the room isn’t relevant, and the far right side of the room is jail. Now there’s an issue: the roach queen in the bottom middle of the room. How can Treehead prevent that roach queen from escaping over behind the force arrow in the lower-right?

Grab all three invisibility potions! If Treehead grabs two of them, he’s still visible upon reaching the bottom half of the room, and the queen escapes. If he beelines for the third, the queen just barely makes it over into no-go land. But if he grabs all three, the queen is stuck out in the open, and Treehead can kill it at his leisure.

Then he works on the remaining parts. The trap at the top-left causes the two roaches to pincer-attack Treehead as he strikes the orb to let them out; he can fix that by backswiping them using the little doorway to the area. The roach queen below them has to be carefully herded out of the area by approaching it from the opposite direction you want it to go.

The first eye can be killed by using its own aggression to lure it out.

For the others in the middle, Treehead needs to wade in and take out the first two to let the third come to him.

But there’s a snag over on the right-side of the room: Treehead can’t get these eyes to see him and come for him unless he walks out toward them, stranding himself in the process. And that means that he needs to make it down to this area while visible, drinking two of the three potions at the top of the room. So how can Treehead do that without letting the roach queen escape over to the right of the room?

Any ideas?

The answer here is to wait until the roach queen is about to spawn some roaches before drinking the second potion!

When that happens, the roach queen will block itself in. It’s easier to time this so that the roach queen and the roach end up blocking each other in the bottom-right passage, but it’s also possible to hold up the queen long enough with its babies to catch it before it can escape and attack it from directly above.

Once that roach is out of the way and the eyes on the right can be easily lured over to Treehead, the rest of the room can be solved the same as before.

And, at last, the roach in the lower-left can be picked off.

This is quite the clever room; in the same vein as 2N, it’s easy to get so caught up in how many invisibility potions to take that you forget to use the roach queen’s spawns to your advantage. The other mini-puzzles in the room also help to distract you, as they all look like whether you’re invisible or not might affect the solution, but they can actually be completed either way – except the eyes on the right. To 1S1W!

That’s…a lot of queens, and a lot of potions. First item on the docket: the roach queen near the entrance has to be killed on the way in, since it needs to be dead to open the green doors, and the trapdoors prevent backtracking for it. But it’s also important to become invisible quickly and avoid letting the roach queens spawn a ton of roaches and/or escape up the trapdoor-filled paths to the north.

So Treehead races across the arrow to find a potion (if he entered on the left trapdoor, he could never escape this area) and gets told that this is the challenging option, by an observer who’s here hanging out for some reason. Huh.

Then he jogs to the potion. Looks like he was one step late for the spawn cycle; there’s going to be some cleanup to do.

But at least the roaches won’t come for him until he gets close!

But there’s a problem, as soon as Treehead inevitably becomes visible again. See the roaches in the lower-left? Yep, unwinnable. Looks like Treehead can’t ever be visible when the spawn cycle hits.

One way to do it is to go for the left side first, getting to the potion just before the spawn cycle. But the observer implies there’s some way to do it, while going over the arrow instead.

Still, let’s continue. Treehead just needs to continue to clean up all the roaches, making sure never to let a spawn cycle hit while he’s between invisibility potions. It’s not too difficult, just be careful.

Once they’re all gone, just go and finish off the last queen.

But Treehead can’t resist a challenge like the one the observer offers! Using the magic of the game’s restore function, he can go back to the start of the room. And if he can’t solve the room the hard way, he can always undo that and get back to where he left off. It’s neat!

Kill the first roach…

…and beeline to a potion. Still too slow!

Here the game shows, possibly for the first time, that where your sword points when entering a room can be important. With his sword northwest, he can trim off a step while killing the first roach queen.

And that step makes all the difference. Treehead gets to the potion just in time, and the rest of the room is just as easy as the first time, as long as you keep a careful watch on the spawn clock.

The observer has no words of congratulations for Treehead. Sad!

On to the last room, 1W, where Halph shows up over the arrow. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t there before…

In any case, this room is all about getting to those eyes in the lower-right. They’ll get themselves stuck if they see you, so the top priority is to close the door in front of them. The orb near Treehead here closes the little door near the top…

…which lets Treehead go up and hit it without awakening the eye over on the left-hand side, closing the bottom-right door.

Then Treehead can send Halph up to the top middle orb to open the door around the trapdoor, and drop the trapdoor to allow access to the orb on the far left, which will give Treehead access to the eyes.

But…what about those roaches in the bottom-left?

Yes, a reset is required. Turns out those roaches can only be lured out of their little room if Treehead enters from the south entrance. Tricksy!

With those roaches gone, Treehead can repeat the whole process, leaving only the north-west evil eye standing.

Then he can sneak by that eye, using the invisibility potion to his advantage, and circle around to kill it. This is why Treehead can’t pick up the other invisibility potion and use it to hit the orbs up top; then this potion will make him visible, and the last eye will trap itself forever.

No dice. And yet another restart is required, because – of course – killing Halph is the same as a death.

The secret is to catch Halph when he goes to open one of the doors (or even at the very start of the room) and park him somewhere out of the way. I’d be surprised if anyone ever completes this room for the first time without restarting at least once, maybe even twice.

Then, at last, Treehead is free to return to the blue door.

And the blue door leads, of course, to the back door into the Slayer’s area. The orb by Treehead opens both the door next to him and the one blocking the potion to the north. Then he’s got to get to the long, twisty passage to hit the orb that opens up the stairs.

First things first: an all-out rush toward the Slayer will get Treehead close enough to get around him without being impaled.

Then it’s over to the potion, which predictably makes the Slayer lose track of Treehead. While the Slayer can’t see him, his wisp won’t reach out for Treehead, giving him all the time in the world.

Enough time, even, to navigate this annoying passageway.

Ah, 39th Slayer, you card. Fun little setpiece, this room.

And, next time, we’ll be on to the Eighth Level! This time it has to be introducing a new monster!

Here the game shows, possibly for the first time, that where your sword points when entering a room can be important. With his sword northwest, he can trim off a step while killing the first roach queen.

This seems kind of bad! Like, if I was playing this and found out that this was the solution, I think I'd be pretty steamed!

Another icy-cold level. Those strange tiles up in the upper-left are new, but the path Treehead is on certainly seems to be hinting at another new enemy…

Why did it have to be- *gunshot*

Treehead lays out the situation here. Serpents can’t be hurt with his really big sword, so he’s got to use the environment and set traps for them. But how does that work?

First, the orb will let him into the room with the serpent. Nothing Treehead can do with his sword will damage the serpent, as advertised, and the serpent also follows some peculiar movement rules.

Firstly, serpents can only move orthogonally (i.e., not diagonally). They will also always move toward Treehead, if possible. Their single-mindedness in closing in on Treehead coupled with their long tails can make them difficult to evade; since serpents can’t move diagonally, Treehead uses one move of his for every two of theirs whenever he does so.

Serpents’ long tails can make them do some strange things when there’s a wall between them and Treehead, or when Treehead moves quickly around their heads. This is often an annoyance when trying to control a serpent’s movement, but it can also help in specific situations. Their last movement quirk is that, when given the choice between horizontal or vertical movement, serpents will prefer one or the other depending on the last digit of the spawn clock (which is why it appears on the left when a serpent is present). If the spawn counter ends in 0-4, the serpent will prefer to move horizontally; if it ends in 5-9, the serpent will prefer to move vertically. This is rarely, but sometimes, useful. Serpents have some other small movement intricacies, but they can be safely ignored.

Treehead lures the serpent through the narrow corridors into the south part of the room, and now we can see how serpents can be damaged. As the serpent gets stuck and can’t move, its head stays in place, but its tail still shrinks.

Eventually, its tail gets short enough to free itself and come after Treehead again. So how can he finish it off?

By hitting the orb again to trap the serpent in the passage. This gives it no escape, causing its tail to shrink until it dies.

The only way out of this room for now is the southwest passage, so Treehead goes there.

This leads him back to the entrance and to those strange tiles. Treehead can quickly see, from the roaches’ movement, that they only move orthogonally while in these tiles.

And that applies to him, too! Diagonal movement is forbidden when inside these bracketed tiles. This doesn’t do anything to stop Treehead from killing off these roaches and opening the door to the east, though.

Treehead hits the nail on the head here: with the diagonal movement advantage removed, serpents will become very difficult to avoid.

1E has an obvious method to kill the serpents via the trap at the top, but Treehead can’t reach that now. His only option is over the arrow to the south.

And here Treehead tells us that serpents can’t cross force arrows, not only against the grain, so to speak, but in any direction.

As Treehead says, later it’ll have to be. This room is purple on the minimap, not red, meaning that it doesn’t need to be cleared to open the level’s blue door; the other side of this room is probably behind the blue door.

The next room is an empty fork, with a blue door blocking the other half of 1E, as predicted. Treehead follows the right-hand rule and moves on to 1S, which surprisingly has no serpents.

It does have the return of wubbas, but due to the room’s construction providing narrow exits for each chamber, Treehead can avoid taking a growing collection of wubbas with him as he goes, as long as he’s careful. The rest of the room is trivial roach-killing.

That room leads to this one, where the entrance orb decides where Treehead goes next. Looks like he’ll be returning to this room – maybe several times.

And that one leads to this mess. A handy scroll that Treehead is standing on explains how all those orbs and doors work. It’s possibly even more confusing than it sounds!

Here’s what clicking on one of the orbs shows: hitting an orb will close all adjacent doors, but open all other doors adjacent to each of the surrounding orbs. How does that apply to the task at hand (snake manipulation)? Beats me! The lone orb by the checkpoint will let out all the snakes; how does Treehead kill them?

It’s possible there’s a better way, but I prefer to close a door while Treehead is standing on it (enemies can’t hurt you then) and just wait around for a while until the snakes kill themselves. It’s not that efficient, but it has the least amount of engagement possible with the snake manipulation device, and that’s important!

Meanwhile, all the roach queens are spawning roaches, and the snakes will eventually all die. Then it’s a matter of killing roaches, stepping off the closed door, and becoming mobile again.

Of course, the room isn’t over yet. Treehead still needs to go into each of the snake chambers and hit the orb there to open up the way to a single roach queen, then kill it, and repeat five more times. All the while killing roaches from the other queens and trying to avoid interacting with the snake manipulation device.

I’ll spare you the screenshots. This room is unique and memorable, but it’s really not very fun.

Once that room is finally over with, it’s on to the south. Here the puzzle is again killing the snakes, with the door/corridor contraption on the west half of the room the only way to do it aside from making snake traps out of roaches.

The way it works is pretty easy. Both orbs toggle all three doors; so you lure the snake in, hit the bottom orb while the snake is in the top half, and profit. Then you do it again. Then you clean up the roaches.

…can you tell I’m getting tired of snakes?

Once again, this room looks like it will be backtracked through. But not yet; on to the east.

Here we’ve got a race to stay ahead of several snakes, on orthogonal tiles, while also being beset by roaches from a queen. The objective is to hit the orbs, first top, then right, then left, to open the way to kill the roach queen and set up a snake trap using its crumbly walls.

The force arrows are oases in the desert of orthogonal tiles for Treehead; the snakes can’t cross them, so he can stand on them and be safe, then wait for an opening to dash to the next arrow. Due to the tiles, this is harder than it sounds!

Plus there are roaches coming at him from the central chamber. The good news is that the mass of snakes tends to kill a few of their own number off by forming temporary traps with their bodies, which frees up some room for Treehead to move around.

It’s often best to keep moving as much as possible to stay ahead of some of the snakes, though usually at least one will be right behind you.

Finally, once all three orbs have been hit, it’s all about making your way back to the middle.

There, Treehead can get ready to kill off the last snakes. The middle allows diagonal movement, which helps considerably; just be sure not to break too many walls!

Eventually, Treehead manages to herd all the snakes to their doom and can continue east.

To more snakes! The orbs on the right each open up half of the snake trap-looking thing in the middle, but also open up half of the walls that keep the snakes penned in. But how will Treehead get back after he goes over to hit those orbs?

With Halph! Treehead just needs to Frogger his way into the middle and let Halph do the opening-doors work.

Get Halph to open up the two traps…

…and dance around them like your life depends on it!

The difficulty is in surviving the initial snake onslaught; once you’ve made it far enough, the room is easy. And the only way out of this one, at least for now, is back to the east, using Halph to open up the door next to the force arrows.

There is an easier way to do this room without using the snake traps at all. Can you think of it?

Circling back around, Treehead finds his next room to solve at 3S1E. Looks like some more snake-dodging is in order.

The room is a light course of wubba-herding, snake-herding, and roach-killing. The biggest challenge is figuring out how to kill the snakes, as the second one has the obvious niches blocked by wubbas, and the third one doesn’t have any obvious snake-traps accessible.

Then a wubba will do for the last one. Thank goodness for those force arrows; this would be very tough without them. On to the east.

Invisibility makes a triumphant return here in 3S2E. Treehead is forced to drink a potion immediately on entering the room, so he can choose when to engage with all the enemies in the room.

The roaches around the outside need to be lured into the central room to be dealt with; this can be done by using the snakes to wall off the force arrow traps that the roaches could fall into.

The other two bunches of roaches can be done the same way.

And the two roach queens can be forced out of their homes by carefully approaching them from the side that won’t force them into the force arrows. Easy does it, right?

But…uh…how do we kill the snake? We can’t get out to drop the trapdoor in its path because of the force arrows…

A little foresight is required; one of the roaches can be left in the path of the snake…

…which will kill it off just as well as anything else!

Circling back, Treehead finds his way to 2S1E, for more fun with orthogonal tiles.

Time for a welcome breather. This is a straightforward room, only requiring Treehead to chase down the roach queens while fighting off pursuing roaches. The only complication is the orthogonal tiles, which do change things up a bit; but they affect the roaches just the same as Treehead, so the danger isn’t too great.

That threat soon over with, it’s off to the north.

Which leads back to previously-visited 1S1E. East from there is an unsolved room. This looks like one that Treehead probably should have taken on earlier in the floor.

The orb opens the doors and makes the snake traps viable; Treehead can just wait in safety below the arrows to kill off most of the snakes.

Also, Halph is here for some reason, but he’s completely useless on the other side of the tunnel. ???

Treehead has to wade into snakeland to kill the last few snakes, but it’s easy with the ready-made traps.

South of there are a bunch of islands with snakes, each of which provides its own unique snake-killing challenge.

The first snake is a race to the finish. Hit the orb to open the door and then race through. Just – as the screenshot shows – be careful when you do it!

OK, much better. See any convenient place to lure snake 2 to its demise?

The upper right is the way to go. This snake is just short enough that it’ll let you step out of its trap once it has chased you in almost all the way.

Snake 3, in the middle, can take some time, but doesn’t pose any threat. Hit one of the orbs on the sides to open up a trap for it, then lure it down the middle and into the trap. Snake movement makes it tricky to get the snake in there, but keep at it and you’ll get it eventually.

Snake 4 is also fiddly. Open up the door, get it so that it wants to move directly toward you but is blocked by its own body, and opposite you into the trap it’ll go.

I find it easiest to do snakes 5 and 6 in one go. 6 is easier; once you open the doors, you can lure it into the trap easily from an adjacent platform.

And 5 is best handled by looping back around, standing below it, and luring it into the trap from there.

With that done, it’s back to a previously-cleared room, and it looks like the blue doors are open! First, though, where do these tunnels lead?

Oh, yeah, Halph is here again somehow.

Well, that tunnel was a bust. After some searching aroud for where to go next…

…it turns out all the tunnels in 3S1E are the way to go.

This leads to 4S1E again, where some scrolls have a message for Treehead, contradicting what the arrows in the walls seem to be saying.

Quote:

Scroll 1: Turn back.

Scroll 2: No, seriously, turn back.

Scroll 3: Trust me, turn back.

Scroll 4: TURN BACK!

Scroll 5: This is your final warning! TURN BACK!!

Scroll 6: Okay, THIS is your final warning. TURN BACK!!!

Despite the increasing number of exclamation points, Treehead soldiers on.

To find a new room, with lots of curious and seemingly-superfluous orbs. Looks like luring some wubbas in to kill the snakes is all there is to it.

Wubbas: come with me if you want to live!

Charge!

OK, there’s one down.

And there’s the second. Good work, team wubba.

But Treehead raises a good point here. The orb below him will get him out of this little enclosure, but the only ways out of the room are in the northwest, and I’m pretty sure those didn’t go anywhere….

Nope. Back down. Maybe there’s a way to exit the room with it solved.

Uh…hi! Wasn’t expecting you here! By the way…where did you come from?

OK, looks like there’s some urgency to finding a way out of here now. The southeast passage is the obvious candidate, but the first orb closes the first door and toggles the other three, while the second orb only closes the second and third doors. So how to get out?

Making a dash for it just leads to a trapped Treehead.

And trapping the Slayer in with wubba buddies, while fun, doesn’t really solve anything.

No, the answer is to get the Slayer into the passage, then make a dash for it.

…and then he’ll strike the first orb again to give chase, letting you out of your trap. Neat!

Well, we didn’t have much choice, did we, scroll?

OK, this one looks complicated. Nothing for it but to follow the snake around the circuit!

The orb alcove here gives Treehead a chance to catch his breath and ping this orb.

Which opens up the way to the inner snake. Luckily, Treehead can sit here in a standoff with the Slayer indefinitely, letting him wait for the inner snake to make its way around.

The next orb lets Treehead get into the inner chamber, carefully stepping diagonally past the Slayer’s hook on his way by.

There’s a roach trap in here that’s intended to kill Treehead when he opens it up by surrounding him from both sides, but a cracked wall above the orb is a glaring flaw, letting Treehead clear out the north side, hit the orb, then take out the south part.

Agreed, Treehead, agreed.

The Slayer now steps into the inner snake’s path, helpfully killing the snake as he does.

And Treehead can step back out into the outer snake’s path.

But here there’s a problem: once he does, the Slayer steps onto the force arrow behind him. And when Treehead comes back around with the snake, he has no way to get past the Slayer’s hook; either it gets him or the snake does.

Approaching the Slayer from the inside doesn’t seem to help; he’s stuck on the arrow, and no amount of intimidation will get him to retreat in front of the snake’s head.

Lastly, there doesn’t seem to be a way to get the Slayer to step in front of the outer snake on the first time past it, at least not one that’s immediately apparent.

Well, I’m stumped, and clearing this room is the only way to proceed with the game. Any ideas, Talking Time?

So, back to this snake room that nobody has any idea about. When faced with a difficult problem like this, with no apparent ideas even after racking the collective brains of TT for one, there’s only one place to go.

That’s right, to the hints and solutions
page of the Caravel Games forum! Where you can look up threads people have submitted asking for help on any room in any hold, even user-created ones. For popular holds like Journey to Rooted Hold, if there aren’t any threads on the room, you’re probably way, way overthinking things.

In this case, the threads have our answer; once the Slayer is on the force arrow, step over near the orb to get him to walk off in the path of the snake. Sure, it seems easy…once you know what the solution is!

With that done, we can finally let the Slayer kill of the snake and exit this room, where Treehead has been stuck for weeks, to the northeast.

Where we find that some backtracking is in order. Some trapdoors trap the Slayer behind Treehead, but he must move on, and the newly-opened path is the obvious way.

Running away…

Hm…what to do here? No exits are open.

The obvious answer is that structure in the southwest. Hitting either of the orbs toggles all three nearby doors, but also opens up an exit in the northeast.

Treehead can shimmy around the Slayer, once inside, by hitting the bottom orb while the Slayer is in the top part, then making a break for it once the Slayer lets him out. Easy enough.

The scroll reveals that Treehead would be trapped here forever if not for the Slayer’s assistance. Thanks, buddy!

Then, hitting the nearby orb opens up the tunnel on the far west side of the room, and the chase is back on.

Back past this mess of a snake-manipulation machine…

…back through the room full of orbs, where Treehead has to hit them as quickly as possible to stay ahead of the Slayer…

…to 2S1E, where an orb traps the Slayer behind Treehead (this time for longer than just one room, as indicated by Treehead’s line) and lets Treehead continue north.

And we’re back near the start of the level, but now able to continue down a previously-closed path.

Where we find the other side of the room from way back at the start of the level, where killing the snakes will be trivial thanks to the snake-killing doors and orb that are so thoughtfully provided.

Halph: Can’t you stop him? I mean, you’re the best swordsman ever, right?

Treehead: I can’t stop him, Halph. He’s too good.

Halph: So we have to go back?

Treehead: Yeah, but not the way we came. Pretty sure he’s waiting back there. I got a reckoning sense I’ve learned to rely on. We’ve been heading down, sure, but also south. Toward Blorn.

Halph: I’ve been to Blorn before. With my cousins last year.

Treehead: Quiet! So somebody told me about a passage in the sewers below Blorn. The guy couldn’t open it, but it would let you in from the other side.
Halph: Just like that one in Dugan’s Dungeon we came through.

Treehead: Exactly! I think we get to that Blorn passage, by heading north here. So Halph, when I drop the green door, I want you to run, got that?

Halph: You bet, Unka Treehead.

How dramatic!

So…where did he go? I guess Treehead doesn’t have to worry about him, in any case.

By stepping diagonally, Treehead avoids the eyes’ gaze for as long as he can. (The checkered pattern on the floor helps here; note that most eyes are on dark tiles and look diagonally, meaning they can only see dark tiles.) It turns out to be a good decision; once an eye sees him, the Slayer is back for more chasing.

And Treehead has to spend a lot of time in this spiral, hitting the first orb, doubling back for the second, then going to the center to kill the eye that’s staring at a wall. And he has to do it before the Slayer bottles him in.

Level nine! We’re going to get a look at the level’s new potion right away, it looks like – there’s no other way Treehead is going to get to that roach queen in the upper-right.

Sure, whatever that is!

(Treehead already knows about this because mimic potions aren’t new to this game; they’re a carryover from DROD 1.0.)

Upon stepping on the potion, time pauses, and a blue copy of Treehead appears, which can be placed in any empty floor space. The top-right is definitely the place for this one.

Once the mimic is placed, it does exactly what Treehead does. So all Treehead has to do is swing his sword and the mimic does the same to kill the roach queen in the top-right. Then it’s a simple matter of chasing down and killing the other roach queen, and Treehead is free to proceed. He heads west.

1W holds another mimic challenge, this time exploring mimic movement in greater detail. Treehead has to navigate the mimic around the west side of the room to kill all the rock golems.

This seems pretty easy, but the mimic can’t reach from where Treehead set it down! What do we do?

Answer: you can “push” the mimic relative to Treehead by finding a place where its movement is blocked in a direction and Treehead’s isn’t, then moving in that direction. So by walking east here…

…Treehead can get the mimic far enough west to get to that golem. Then it’s more of the same for the rest of the room. To the south!

Hmm…looks like this is the wrong entrance to complete this room from. I’m sure we’ll be back!

Backtracking around to the entrance, Treehead continues on to 1S. Here he has three groups of enemies that require mimics to kill: the roach queen groups in the lower left and upper right, and the serpent in the middle. Conveniently enough, there are three mimic potions. Treehead just needs to take out the whole left side before going over the force arrows for those potions.

Efficient killing will help Treehead clear the left side before the other roach queens spawn too many enemies, making the room easier and speeding it up at the same time. Here, it looks like Treehead should kill the eye to his right before proceeding, then wake the next eye. But he can do things more quickly by stepping south to wake up the next eye, then northeast to backswipe the right eye, and northwest to backswipe the left eye.

The rest of the left side is pretty easy, if slightly complicated by roach queen spawns.

At last, Treehead can get over to the right side, with his mimics in position to take out the enemies on the islands. After that, it’s just cleanup. Let’s head west to the puzzle room we already discovered.

Here’s the gimmick: Treehead has to drop all the trapdoors to let loose the roaches. But there isn’t enough to push the mimic off of to get it to all the trapdoors. So he needs another mimic in the north to hit the switches and toggle one door at a time, so that the mimic can get to the next trapdoor, drop it, and push off the resulting gap. It’s a pretty cool puzzle that is essentially a remake of a similar puzzle in King Dugan’s Dungeon (22F 1S):

While it’s likely possible to get stuck here if you push the mimic too far away from the doors, there’s no time limit; take it nice and slow, and remember to keep the mimic’s sword pointed in a direction that won’t hit a different orb and open the door you’re trying to push off of!

Once the mimic is at the last trapdoor, don’t get too excited; remember that you’ve got to be ready for the roaches! Make sure your sword is pointed toward them and you should be fine.

On to 1S1E for another puzzle (notice that mimics are very well suited to puzzles like this, as opposed to simple “kill things quickly enough to survive” challenges). This one looks tough; where does the mimic potion sitting out in the open go?

Well, that orb on the far right opens the door to the second potion, and you need two, so I guess it’s going over there. Now to make sure that nothing from the main chamber makes it over the arrows. Treehead needs to get all the eyes tracking him, so that when he steps in to the small island with the second mimic potion, the mimic can kill everything with only a small movement change, and still make it to the north orb, which lets Treehead off of that little island.

But then he’s got to hurry north; that orb also closes one of the nearby doors, and if any of the enemies get behind any of the three southernmost sets of arrows, there’s no way to kill them with the second mimic and also let Treehead off of the northern island.

Hitting the orb along the way closes the next door, which allows Treehead to get the enemies to the northernmost (safe) set of arrows.

Then he’s got to open the doors and move into the other eyes’ line of sight to get them to tag along.

This almost looks good…most of the eyes are looking diagonally and can be snagged later. But what about the one remaining horizontal one?

Yep, that’s a restart. This time, Treehead grabs that eye before heading back and opening the other door.

OK, much better. To the north!

With all the enemies piled up, Treehead can push the mimic off the enemies to get it inside the arrows, where he can kill all the enemies and then hit the orb.

This is a pretty devious room! There are several layers to the solution, and they have to be done in a specific order. It’s easy to forget a step and have to go back and redo the whole thing. At least it’s not as tedious as some later puzzles…

Aha! What’s this? Looks like a secret! (This is also a reminder to shout out any possible secrets you see as I’m playing to make me go check them out!)

It leads to a secret scene, after circling around several inaccessible areas from previous rooms.

Quote:

RUNNER 1: I need to get a message to the Empire right away! Please tell them that the 39th Slayer’s got trouble. This delver’s coming down, so please send someone after Treehead Woodfist quick.

RUNNER 2: After Treehead Woodfist. Right.

This one is another in a long series of side conversations you can see via secrets. I think this message may be getting distorted a little…

Anyway, back through and on to 1S2E. This one’s a mimic maze! The mimic can only be placed on the floor space, not open doors; once it’s down, Treehead has to find a way to get the mimic through the maze to the orb so that he can continue onward. It’s a fun way to learn more about pushing mimics.

Notably, if Treehead tries to move diagonally and the mimic is blocked from doing so, it’ll move orthogonally in one of those directions instead: first vertically, if available, then horizontally. Here, if Treehead moves southeast, the mimic will only move east.

Anyway, trial and error will eventually solve this one, getting the mimic to the orb and letting Treehead continue east.

East has yet another diabolical puzzle. The three mimics need to go in the orb enclosures to the far north; then Treehead needs to find a way through to kill each roach without getting the mimics stuck on the arrows. Each orb toggles one door but closes others, so Treehead has to manipulate them from orb to orb as he moves.

The first mimic goes in the rightmost orb chamber, opens the first door, and can then be discarded on the arrow. The other two mimics in the other two chambers will be opening the rest of the doors. With both of them hitting their leftmost orbs, the way north is open.

Treehead can kill the first eye and carefully make his way forward by having the leftmost mimic hit its center orb. It’s quite possible to get stuck in the eye chambers, unable to exit without sending a mimic onto the arrows, so the checkpoints are important in this room.

The rest of the room is difficult to convey in screenshots. Take it slow, check the mimics before each north or south step, and you’ll get there in the end.

Once the room is complete, you’re free to trap the mimics on the arrows forever. Treehead moves on to the south.

To another mimic maze!

This time, the mimic needs to start where it can kill the rock golem, then push off the wall below the golem and the arrows in order to get out of that chamber.

Then it needs to hit this orb to let Treehead into the central chamber, where he can park the mimic below the force arrows and then walk into the maze on the left side of the room.

Once both are in their mazes, it’s a matter of guiding the mimic through its area while dropping all the trapdoors. The orthogonal tiles down there are both a help and a hindrance; they make it easier for Treehead to move in a different direction than the mimic, since diagonal moves for Treehead only result in orthogonal moves for the mimic, but they also make it more difficult for the mimic to drop the trapdoors without trapping itself, since it’s unable to move diagonally to make up for a mistake.

Again, take your time, think before you move, and you’ll get there eventually.

Once the mimic gets to the end, it can kill the lonely roach and clear the room. Make sure you drop all the trapdoors, though, or else Treehead is stuck forever!

To the west is a peculiar room. Three mimics, three chambers; it should be easy, right?

But here’s a problem. Two mimics can be placed just fine, but once Treehead steps onto the third mimic potion, that last roach queen formation will tighten up, and Treehead can’t place the potion in among them.

He can place it next to them to kill two, but then there’s no way to move the mimic left to finish off the last two.

Letting the roaches spawn doesn’t help, as the roaches will walk vertically out of range and can’t be used to push the mimic west.

Putting the mimic below the roach queens will allow it to be pushed west…

But there’s no way for the mimic to get the northmost roach queens, nor all the roaches, as they quickly escape out of his range.

Well, I’m stumped. Any ideas, Talking Time? If not, we’ll have to make another trip to the Caravelnet forums!

Mimics kill enemies just fine; it's the thrust of this room. If mimics try to move into enemies, they basically treat the enemy as a wall; that's how Treehead manages to shove the mimic a spot or two left, relative to himself, in the last image. But the enemies still get a chance to move afterward.

Hint (I already looked it up):

The solution does not involve pushing the third mimic off any enemies. But Treehead does need to find a way to push that third mimic west relative to himself...

No, attempting to move diagonally won't do anything for the mimic, since Treehead can't move diagonally. It'll only make the mimic move diagonally if Treehead can move diagonally and the mimic can as well, or orthogonally if Treehead can move diagonally but the mimic can't (in which case the mimic will move vertically if possible and horizontally otherwise).

So, yeah, back to that room…it’s actually pretty easy, and I’m annoyed I didn’t see it in the first place.

The third mimic goes on the side of the last roach group, which means it has to be pushed one square left relative to Treehead.

Then you’ve got to notice that there are seven squares in the entry hallway for a reason! Walking all the way to the right without exiting the room will push the mimic one square left.

And then finishing the room is easy. At last!

That room was actually the last room on the floor, so it’s on to the room that was previously blocked by the blue door. The gimmick here is that the mimic needs to go near the orbs on the left to let Treehead in to attack the enemies. The southeast orb lets him in, but the northwest orb closes the exits to the room! So Treehead has to conquer the whole thing without ever letting his sword point northwest.

The first few chambers are pretty easy, as long as you don’t forget about your sword. While the roaches at the top of this first chamber might naturally be killed with a northwest sword, it’s not hard to point it north and sideswipe them instead.

The northeast is a little trickier, as the golems and eyes can’t be lured out of the room, and Treehead will have to advance to attack them. Still, a little planning and a west sword will get him through.

Then it’s down to the south, where the pile of enemies poses an issue. If Treehead strikes the orb with either a north or east sword, he’ll let all the enemies out after him, and they’ll quickly overwhelm him unless he’s very careful with his footwork. So he goes around the south side first, trusting in a north sword to clear out the enemies, and retreating and switching to west whenever the roach queen spawns.

This doesn’t quite go as planned!

But by hugging the wall, Treehead manages to survive and attack again.

After he clears out the west side, he takes out the door roaches the way he probably should have in the first place. Note that a north sword and a particular series of steps (SE SE S SW) are required to survive opening this door (barring some crazy golem-leading shenanigans, anyway).

Then all that’s left are the snakes, and it’s easy to use the breakable walls (or trapdoors, if you’re desperate) to make a trap to kill them both. Treehead continues to the south.

Huh, looks like the end of the level!

And there’s a way up, out of the dungeon! But the slayer’s here to cut it off!

Buzzkill. Treehead continues down.

The…living tar? Creepy.

Quote:

Oh no.

Oh yes, Treehead. He knows the tar from DRoD 1.0 (it’s that blue stuff), but we don’t. Doesn’t look very alive to me.

AAH! Kill it!

More of them!

The way the living tar works is that it can be cut on any flat surface. This either turns adjacent flat surfaces into curved surfaces, or replaces curved surfaces with tar babies, which act the same as roaches. Straight barriers like in this room are very easy to cut through, but as I’m sure Treehead knows, it can get a lot more complicated.

The next room dials up the tar tutorial several notches, but isn’t really any more difficult. Just cut through flat surfaces and stab the babies as you go.

Since you can only cut through tar on flat surfaces, 2x2 blobs of tar are completely impassible. Make sure not to leave them blocking important paths!

Also…uh…be careful where you cut the tar. Babies that show up on top of walls can be killed and will walk off the wall toward Treehead if possible. But that northwest baby, surrounded by walls, is stuck and unkillable. This one requires a reset.

Much better.

To the east: more tar! But those black doors look new…

That’s right: they only open when all tar in the room (not necessarily babies too) is clear. So this room, and any others like it, are tar-clearing puzzles. Don’t leave any 2x2 blobs!

The tar in the top-left is easy enough. Keep stabbing the lowest vertical surface you can find and it’ll get cleared right up.

Likewise in the bottom-left. Cut through to the babies first, either vertically or horizontally but not both; then the remaining blobs can be cleared away.

The right side is the most complicated. Take it slow and be sure to nip any potential 2x2s, like the one to the left of Treehead here, in the bud before you cut away the rest of the surrounding tar.

With the room clear, the black door opens, as promised. Treehead goes north.

Oh boy. Only one enemy, but the left orb opens a door surrounding the right orb, which in turn opens a door that can barely be seen under the tar surrounding the roach. This here’s a dig through the tar maze.

In a tar maze like this, 2-wide hallways any longer than 1 tile are impassable. See for example the hallway directly to the west; Treehead has no way to cut through that. So he proceeds north into the west maze.

Note also that any 2-wide space can potentially become impassable if the tar is cut just in front of it; it important to cut into those spaces and remove the tar, as Treehead does here. If he had cut one space south of where he did, he would have gotten himself stuck and had to reset.

That first choke point and this one here are the toughest points of the west maze. Everything else is just cutting straight to the orb.

Now for the east maze. With a lot more choke points, this maze requires you to think carefully about your path through it.

Treehead finds a way, and gains access to the enemies. It’s also possible to sneak through the small diagonal gap, a little to the west.

Killing the roaches is the easy part.

Aha! There’s a faint little crack here!

A secret room! Remember to let me know if you spot places these could be hidden!

…aw.

At least this one was a flavor room and not the other kind of secret room: a particularly diabolical puzzle.

On his way back, Treehead has to cut through some tar again. You can see how the tar can get very frustrating very quickly.

This time, to the east, where Treehead again has to clean up all of the dungeon architects’ messes.